President Donald Trump continued to criticize Federal Reserve Board chairman Jerome Powell during a phone interview Wednesday with Fox Business.
Powell “should’ve never raised the rates,” Trump said, claiming that his hand-picked Fed chair is “trying to prove how tough he is.”
“He’s trying to prove how tough he is ‘cause he’s not going to get pushed around,” Trump said, adding, “Nobody ever heard of him before.”
Powell, he said, is “not doing a good job.”
Powell on Tuesday hailed the independence of central banks.
“Congress chose to insulate the Fed this way because it had seen the damage that often arises when policy bends to short-term political interests,” Powell said at the New York at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Trump repeated Wednesday that he has the right to demote Powell or fire but wouldn’t say whether he would.
“I have the right to demote him, I have the right to fire him,” he said.
He continued, “I never suggested I was going to do that. I do have the right to do it.”
Trump insisted that Powell “has to lower interest rates for us to compete with China.”
